SAWTOOTH RANCH

BY

B. M. BOWER

METHUEN & CO. LTD.
36 ESSEX STREET, W.C.
LONDON

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

JEAN OF THE LAZY A
GOOD INDIAN
THE UPHILL CLIMB
THE GRINGOS
THE FLYING U'S LAST STAND
THE PHANTOM HERD
THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX
SKYRIDER

This Book was First Published in Great Britain … March 10th, 1921

First Issued in this Cheap Form … 1922

CONTENTS

SAWTOOTH RANCH

CHAPTER I

LITTLE FISH

Quirt Creek flowed sluggishly between willows which sagged none too gracefully across its deeper pools, or languished beside the rocky stretches that were bone dry from July to October, with a narrow channel in the centre where what water there was hurried along to the pools below. For a mile or more, where the land lay fairly level in a platter-like valley set in the lower hills, the mud that rimmed the pools was scored deep with the tracks of the "TJ up-and-down" cattle, as the double monogram of Hunter and Johnson was called.

A hard brand to work, a cattleman would tell you. Yet the TJ up-and-down herd never seemed to increase beyond a niggardly three hundred or so,